


In From the Cold

by dance4thedead



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bucky and Steve are more starcrossed than teens from fair Verona, Captain America: The First Avenger, Howard is a Good Bro, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Rating May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 03:11:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16945878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dance4thedead/pseuds/dance4thedead
Summary: In the last seventy years, there's been a lie that many people have died defending. One that Steve can never know.Simply put, Bucky Barnes never fell from the train in '45. He jumped, infiltrated Hydra, and sabotaged them from the inside... until he didn't.Years later, why he did that and what happened after is recounted to Tony over an insufficient amount of alcohol.





	In From the Cold

**Author's Note:**

> Ratings and tags will change as this series progresses. Likely: explicit, character death, rape, violence. Hydra Trash Party fare. You've been warned.
> 
> Also, if I end up writing everything I plan to write, this fic will feature a rare/unpopular pairing. (No, it's not Bucky/Original Character). If you're a die hard OTP shipper, you've been warned.

 

 

 

 

All warfare is based on deception.  
– Sun Tzu, the Art of War

 

2016

Bucky isn't entirely surprised to wake up from cryo in Stark Tower with his one arm shackled to the bed and with a keyed up Tony Stark sitting beside him, fingers steepled by his temples.  He is surprised that Tony, instead of shooting him point-blank, breathes out a long held breath and demands lowly, "Why did my dad build your arm?"

Bucky blinks at him, stunned speechless for a moment, while taking in the fluorescent lit lab and the burning tingle of sensation flooding back into his extremities.

Tony raises his head and Bucky sees the bags under his eyes, black grease stains on his shirt. In all, he looks like he's had one, maybe two consecutive nights without sleep.

"Earth to Barnes. I asked you why my dad built the arm you used to kill my mom."

Oh. Of course Tony would have brought souvenirs home from Serbia.

He maneuvers around the mag cuff to get to a seated position while cautiously replying, "Long story, pal. Where's-"

Steve.

"Tell me," Tony interrupts him with. "Everything, right now. Was he Hydra, too?"

"Like I said, it's-"

"Yeah, yeah," Tony waves off.

He goes very silent for a long moment, and Bucky wonders for a moment if maybe he should lie for Tony's sake. For Howard's sake.

Then Tony pulls up a chair. "Help me understand him. I have time; I have bourbon."

..........

To talk about Howard, he had to talk about himself. Which also meant that he had to talk about Lana.

The first time he met her, he'd been semi-lucid on that table in Azzano for days, pain-drunk and failing.

There were some welcome moments when he lost consciousness, and he was back home with Steve in their shitty one bed room apartment, warm wool and linen. The train rumbling by, shaking the walls. No pain, no guilt, no things left to do.

But then, he'd be torn out of there, thrown back into his real body on the tilt table, drugs squeezing his brain and setting his world on fire.

She was dressed as nurse, but her broad figure and hard eyes missed the mark on femininity by about 180 degrees.

As she approached that night, per his custom, he gritted out his mantra, "Barnes. James Barnes. Sergeant. Three t--"

Her palm clamped over his mouth, and she whispered lowly, "I will get you off this table, but there will be a price."

His eyes went wide as he imagined an end to the pressure in his skull, the jolts of pain running through his arms and legs. But then he imagined Gabe on the table, or Dum Dum.

Bucky stared back into the eyes of his salvation and slowly rocked his head side to side.

She stood above him, considering something. Gaze softening into almost sympathy.

"Good answer, but it's not up to you."

He shouted protests against her hand.

The nurse's free hand flew up to the IV bag that was pumping who knew what into his system, and switched it out one-handed with a different bag. If he blinked, he would have missed it.

"Remember this moment, and know that without me, you would have been dead by sunrise."

Her voice grew distant as Bucky blacked out.

..........

When he came to, Bucky didn't know if she had been real or a hallucination.

He didn't see her among the Hydra scientists the next day or the next.

..........

Steve rescued Bucky and the rest of the 107th a week later.

...........

"I'm dreaming," he confessed, fingers tangled with Steve's. "Figured that was where He put guys like us."

He pressed an ear to Steve's chest, which rose and fell steadier that he'd ever remembered. "But you came for me. This... this is Heaven," he whispered.

"Quit talking like a dead man, Buck. We got out, okay? You're safe."

Bucky couldn't bring himself to tell Steve otherwise.

..........

He was in his own tent late one night, about to turn in, when she whispers from behind him, "Scream and I'll shoot."

Bucky's heartbeat rose at the familiar voice. He turned, hand flying to quick draw his colt from its holster, but she was faster.

His kneecaps hit the ground, hard, as his legs were pulled out from under him. He reeled, and two knuckles drove into his sternum, retreated, and came back as an open palm shoving him down by the back of the neck. An elbow chopped down on his scapula.

"Stay down," she ordered while clearing his gun, which he hadn't even realized she'd lifted off of him.

Bucky breathed heavily as he strained to look at her, body dead weight from the pressure point hits.

In the lantern light, he saw that her nurse's garb and red-lipsticked mouth were gone, exchanged for fatigues and tightly braided hair. She was handling his empty sidearm as casually as one might a pen.

"Who are you?" he asked. "They said all the men they did experiments on died. All eleven."

"You remember me."

"Who are you? Who do you work for."

"Lana," she replied, pressing a booting foot on him to keep him pinned to the floor. "Soviet Intelligence. Anti-Hydra Division."

"You say you're a Soviet double agent," Bucky nearly chuckled. "and I'm s'possed to just take you for your word. You could be Hydra."

"You're alive."

"That's not somethin' you get to take full credit for."

"Indeed. Three cheers for your Captain America." Her brow quirked. "Speaking of, you're rather sweet on him."

"You don't know nothing about me."

"I work in intelligence, James 'Bucky' Barnes. And since you're now an asset, it's my responsibility to keep tabs on you."

"I'll die before you use me to get to the Cap," he stated as a fact.

Lana laughed to herself. "Of course. I'm just here with a message. The Americans believe Arnim Zola is the key to winning the War. Soviet Intelligence can give you his location, for a price."

"And what would that be?"

She told him. He blanched.

"No deal."

She pushed down a little harder with her boot. "It's in everyone's best interest if you do so willingly. Otherwise, we have ways to force the matter. Collateral."

"What does that even- You know, you've got nothing on me, lady."

"We do. Gross indecency. Evidence. Enough to have you be dishonorably discharged."

Bucky pulled a poker face, one that would've made his old man proud. "You seriously think that's enough to make me-"

"We have the same on him, too."

He didn't even think. Like a reflex, Bucky growled and threw himself off the floor in a futile attempt to lunge at her, all pathetic and animalistic, only for Lana to slam him back down.

"Quiet. We're on your side. We just need your cooperation to take down Hydra. I'll be in touch," she said. "Close your eyes and count up to thirty."

Bucky only got to nine before he opened his eyes. Lana sighed and lamented something about unnecessary brain damage as she choked him out.

..........

"Don't shoot," said Bucky in the dark of Peggy's tent, hands high by his ears, as she woke with a start, pulling the Walther from beneath her pillow.

"Barnes? Christ, at this hour, I ought to," she said, her brown ringlets bobbing as she set the gun aside and quickly pulled a burgundy robe over her nightshirt. "What happened to your neck?"

The moonlight filtered through the canvas. She seemed concerned for him, genuinely. They didn't even know each other all the well.

"Someone threatened to say some things about Steve if I don't cooperate with them," he said softly. "I don't know what to do."

Her brows furrowed. "You mean about Steve being..." She let the sentence trail, but Bucky didn't have it in him to confirm.

If it were true, Steve would be discharged, the public would turn against the Cap, the Howling Commandos disbanded, SSR investigated. Good men would die without him on the front. The Allies would lose the one person who had gone toe to toe with Schmidt and lived.

"You were approached just now?" Peggy picked back up. "What do they want from you?"

"They tried to flip me, I think. They offered Zola in return."

"Hydra?"

"Soviets, she claims."

"Do you believe they can get to Zola?"

He considered, for a moment, it was all a bluff. If the Soviet agent could be just empty threats and empty promises, and he could walk out of this tent and start to put Azzano and everything that happen to him on that table behind him. But reason told him that was a pipe dream, a happy ending that was off the table the day his number came up.

"They had Azzano infiltrated long before Steve got us out."

"Do believe you've been compromised?"

Yes, he thought.

"If I were, I'd be reassigned from the Howlies, wouldn't I?"

"And court martialed, possibly."

"I..." Bucky felt his voice crack. "I'm no sell out, Agent. But... I just got him back."

Peggy gave him a long look. "I know."

Her mouth twitched down into a hard line. "I know and I know we all must make sacrifices, even at the expense of our own lives. That's why, as a commanding officer of the SSR, I'm relaying you these standing orders. If the Soviets contact you again, you are to do everything in your power to capture Zola. This includes death or injury to Philips, myself, and any of the Howling Commandos."

Flashes of their dead, mangled corpse flickered in his mind, like a penny theater macabre.

He didn't know whether to be angry or betrayed.

"Carter, what the hell?"

Her expression was stone. "Zola's important. More than any of us. If we don't end this, and the Tesseract is weaponized, everyone dies. Understood, Sergeant?"

The tension drained from his body.

"Understood."

..........

Peggy's words hung over him, like the shadow of a noose. However, days passed with no sign of the Soviet agent, or Zola.

He and Steve were running out of a barbershop that was fronting as a Hydra armory. Just as they crashed through the front window, the entire shop exploded in a bone shaking explosion, sending them face first into snow.

"You okay?" Steve asked, in breathless concern, as he lifted the shield off of them.

Bucky looked up at him and nodded, surprised. "I think I am."

That night his body pushed glass out of his skin and healed without a scar. That's how he found out.

..........

They Howlies crossed into Italy and continued jumping from Hydra outpost to outpost, leaving nothing but smoldering ruins in their wake.

Steve was down on the ground, doing his front-door-method of attack, while the rest of the guys stealthily moved in to outflank the rest of the enemy.

Bucky lay in a prone position with his rifle on the embankment above the base, maybe 500 or 600 yards away, picking off Hydra operatives whenever Steve got sloppy and left himself wide open.

"Hello James," Lana said from behind him, and Bucky had to tamp down the urge to spin around and squeeze off a couple rounds into the spy.

 "Don'tcha see I'm in the middle of something? Come stalk me later." He kept his eyes fixed on his scope and his men on the ground.

 "Mikael, wind left to right fourteen kilos. Send it." Lana prompted, and the target Bucky had been aiming at slumped forward, shot through the head.

 "What the hell?" Bucky exclaimed, jerking his gaze to them, to find Lana with a pair of binoculars and a well-built man, who was currently shouldering a rifle of his own.

 "Relax, he'll cover for you. He's a good shot, as good as yourself," she soothed.

 "I sorry if I don't trust a commie with a barrel POINTED in the direction of my men!"

Mikael snorted, taking another shot. "Kill the Nazis, yes. Protect the Yanks. Doing."

Lana tosses a small envelope at him. "We'll have Zola cornered for your team there."

"You're taking me in there, too." Bucky said, not asked. "You're afraid of Captain America; or you would have already tried to double cross us."

"There are other ways to neutralize him as a threat. Publicize his homosexuality. Four bullets to the head. Play your part well enough, and we maybe won't have to."

"I will," Bucky resigned "but by the way, Lana, when were you planning on letting me know what you did to me?" He made no effort to temper his  bitterness.

Lana shrugged, "Eventually."

She murmured something to Mikael, and they both slipped away into the tree line.

Bucky raised his rifle and shot down two Hydra operatives below in quick succession. It didn't settle his mind as much as he needed it to.

..........

Steve met up with him after the fight, big sloppy grin on his face.

"How was the view from up there?" Steve asked, jovially slinging an arm over Bucky's back, just like when he was still the five-foot-something cheeky bastard.

Bucky faked a laugh so hard, it hurt.

..........

"What's this?" Peggy asked when Bucky pulled her aside that night and passed her the envelope.

"An obvious trap."

"I'll run it through the appropriate channels."

She read on.

..........

Peggy entered his tent that night, uninvited. He was already awake.

She stood by the foot of his bed and scowled. "You shouldn't smoke in here."

He stared at her a long moment, before snuffing out on his boot. "Say your piece."

"The intel is good. Op is green lit."

Bucky nodded, like that's all he ever did anymore.

"And the price?"

Bucky shrugged. "Don't worry about it, Carter."

Her face turned grim. "What did you do?"

"Nothing really. It just turns out I was right all along. I never really got off that table in Azzano. I mean I thought I did, I even got to see Steve again. And that was a nice... it was a nice dream."

"Oh god," she gasped. "Oh. God. No..."

He looked up at her. "Why are you crying?" he asked, a touch harsher than he meant.

"You have the serum. That's why they want you. It's not a hit, they're taking you prisoner."

"You that protective of the serum?"

"No, it's not... it's simply... I'm so sorry, Barnes." Peggy choked out. "Department X, Soviet Intelligence, they've had a hit out on me for years. I thought they'd want me. I pushed this op through, told you to go for it, because... because..."

Oh, Carter, he thought.

"Knowing what you know, knowing that it's me, you'd still go through with it."

She sniffled. She was always so composed, it was wrong. "Yes," she bit out. "We have to win."

It still hurt hearing her say it.

"For this to work, no one can come for me. Ever. Got it?"

She was wrecked. He wasn't and he did know why, except maybe Zola took that out him, too.

"The includes Stevie. He can't ever know, okay? You can't tell him."

Because Steve Rogers, even ninety pound asthmatic Steve Rogers, would move Heaven and Earth and get him back. He'd kill, he'd disobey his country. God, Steve would burn all of Europe in order to find him.

But when the dust settled, there would be no more Captain America, just a sorry faggot rotting in a USA prison.

Take Zola, take him, leave Steve alone. That's was enough, in his book.

"Tell him I'm dead. Make sure he-"

Peggy turned and made to flee the tent.

"Peggy, wait."

She did, amazingly.

"Come here," he said, sliding over to make room on the bed. "You can't be running out of my tent all teary-eyed in the dead of the night. What'll they think of us?"

She stayed until she stopped crying. Then he started crying and she stayed. It was the closest he'd ever get to saying goodbye to Steve.

"Give him a last dance for me," he made her promise. She swore she would.

..........

The next day, he put on a brave face for Steve's sake. For everyone's sake.

Acting the definition of SNAFU.

He tried to commit Steve to memory, selfishly. Selfishly asked Steve to forgive him a million times, in his mind.

Then it was time.

Together they boarded the train the via zip line.

..........

They got Zola.

..........

Bucky knew the opening for what it was the moment Steve got distracted and the hole was blasted in the wall of the cabin.

He could stay on the train. Stay with Steve until they reached the end and the Soviets took him by force.

But he didn't, he went right over to the edge, toes hanging over as he willed himself to jump. Tried to find the strength to leave.

It looked like a hell of a long way down.

"Bucky!" he heard from behind him. "Take my hand!"

He turned, a shutter in his mind capturing those desperate blue eyes, and thought, how could he not do this for Stevie.

So he let himself fall.

..........

Steve's horrified face grew smaller and smaller as Bucky fell away.

A scream clawed its way out of Bucky as something in him died.

..........

A hand locked on to Bucky's wrist, then the other wrist.

Impossible, he thought, still falling.

Then the person flipped around so they were facing, so Bucky could cling on to him.

Brown eyes, merry, like this entire ordeal was hilarious.

Howard fucking Stark reached back and pulled the chute on his back.

Their bodies jerked, then their decent slowed.

"Hell of a trust fall, Barnes," said Howard, with a wild grin.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> ISO beta. You do me, I'll do you. Like writing-pals, with benefits.


End file.
